Shortly after the film tax credit scandal broke in September, Governor Chet Culver promised a “comprehensive review” of all tax credits. On Thursday we learned more about how this review will be conducted. Recommendations are likely before the state legislature convenes in January 2010.

Join me after the jump for additional details and analysis.

Politicians in both parties have complained that proposed federal climate change bills are “unfair” to Midwestern states, which rely largely on coal to generate electricity. Utility companies and corporate groups have tried to reinvent themselves as defenders of the public interest against those who would unjustly “punish” consumers living in coal-dependent states.

Physicians for Social Responsibility released a report this week on “Coal’s Assault on Human Health.” This report should be required reading for all members of Congress, especially Senator Tom Harkin and other Democrats who have demanded more subsidies for coal-burning utilities in the climate-change bill. From the executive summary (pdf file):

Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. […] Each step of the coal lifecycle–mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes–impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the U.S. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.

In yesterday’s Des Moines Register, Lee Rood highlighted some of the extra burdens Iowans bear because of coal-fired power plants. Follow me after the jump for more.

Next spring, Iowa’s third Congressional district will see its first competitive Republican primary in some time. State Senator Brad Zaun of Urbandale told CQ Politics today that he plans to run against seven-term incumbent Representative Leonard Boswell. Zaun said he will formally announce his candidacy sometime after December 1.

Earlier today, The Iowa Republican blog reported that former Iowa State wrestling coach Jim Gibbons is quitting his job at Wells Fargo to run for Congress against Boswell. One of the previously announced candidates, Dave Funk of Runnells, indicated in this comment thread that he will stay in the race. Until this week, Funk and Pat Bertroche of Clive were the only confirmed Republican candidates against Boswell.

Zaun was just re-elected to the Iowa Senate in 2008, so he won’t have to give up his seat in the upper chamber if he loses the GOP primary or the general election.

CQ Politics suggested that with Gibbons and Zaun in the race, it may change its rating on this district from “safe Democratic.” I tend to agree with the statement that Gabby Adler of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent to CQ Politics:

“Each year Republicans claim they have Congressman Boswell in their sights, and each year they never live up to their own hype – there is no reason to believe this time will be any different,” Adler said.

As I’ve previously written, I do not consider Boswell an endangered incumbent this cycle. That said, the prospect of continuing job losses throughout 2010 could put many Democratic incumbents at risk.

What puzzles me is why so many Republicans are seeking this position. Even if a Republican beats Boswell, he is likely to be thrown into a 2012 primary against Tom Latham in a redrawn IA-03. Few people would choose a freshman over a nine-term incumbent with a seat on the House Appropriations Committee.  

I’m looking forward to the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner this weekend. It will be live-streamed for those who can’t be there in person. The Iowa branch of Organizing for America is having a grand opening on Saturday as well, right before the JJ dinner.

Details for those and other events are after the jump. Post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know if something I’ve left out.

Linn County Dems: Don’t forget that November 24 is the special election in Iowa House district 33.

One more “save the date”: the Culver-Judge campaign’s holiday party will be on Saturday, December 5 at the Val-Air Ballroom in West Des Moines from 7:30 pm to 11:00 pm. Tickets are just $35 for an individual, $10 for students and $50 for a family. Call 515-244-5151 or go to www.chetculver.com for more information.

The mystery “top-rate” Republican recruit against Representative Leonard Boswell emerged today. According to The Iowa Republican blog, former Iowa State University wrestling coach Jim Gibbons will file papers with the Federal Election Commission to run in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

At Ames High School, he won three state titles. At Iowa State University, he was a three-time All-American and won a national championship during his junior year.

When his collegiate wrestling career was over, then-ISU coach Dr. Harold Nichols, offered Gibbons a job as an assistant coach. When Nichols retired in 1986, Gibbons was named head coach. He coached seven individual NCAA champions while compiling a 96-32-1 career coaching mark. After winning the NCAA Championships in 1987, Gibbons was named national coach of the year. He was named Big Eight Coach of the Year in 1991 and retired from coaching after the 1992 season.

Since leaving coaching, Gibbons has been a financial advisor, most recently with Wells Fargo Advisors in West Des Moines. He also serves as a television commentator, providing color commentary for ESPN, The Big Ten Network, and Iowa Public Television. In 2003, he was named broadcaster of the year by the National Wrestling Media Association.

Gibbons says he is retiring from Wells Fargo to run for Congress full-time. He opposed the federal stimulus package and Democratic bills on health care reform and climate change.

I’m guessing that this means State Senator Brad Zaun and former Iowa GOP chairman Mike Mahaffey will not seek the Republican nomination to challenge Boswell. Gibbons can probably raise a decent amount of money and may even be able to self-fund his campaign. The National Republican Congressional Committee is unlikely to invest a lot of money in this district in my opinion.

College wrestling is a popular sport in Iowa, but I still don’t see Boswell as a likely casualty next year. If unemployment keeps rising, though, who knows? Any comments about this or other House races are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: In the comments, Bleeding Heartland user mirage, who is a Republican, believes Zaun would be a stronger candidate than Gibbons. Zaun was mayor of Urbandale, a heavily Republican suburb of Des Moines, before winning a seat in the Iowa Senate in 2004.

SECOND UPDATE: I was wrong about Zaun. He told CQ Politics today that he plans to run against Boswell and will announce his candidacy sometime after December 1.

Congressional Republicans were fine with the Bush administration’s decision to prosecute the “20th 9/11 hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui in U.S. federal court.

Republicans didn’t hit the panic button when would-be “shoe bomber” Richard Reid was tried in federal court.

Numerous international terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda are already in U.S. prisons. In May, Fred Kaplan reported for Slate:

According to data provided by Traci L. Billingsley, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, federal facilities on American soil currently house 216 international terrorists and 139 domestic terrorists. Some of these miscreants have been locked up here since the early 1990s. None of them has escaped. At the most secure prisons, nobody has ever escaped, period.

Now that the Obama administration is planning to try some terrorism suspects in U.S. criminal courts and transfer others to U.S. prisons, GOP leaders want Americans to be very afraid. Iowa’s Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon.

Iowa’s second Congressional district is the most Democratic-leaning of our five districts. It has a partisan voting index of D+7, which means that in any given year, we would expect this district to vote about 7 point more Democratic than the country as a whole. In 2008, Dave Loebsack won re-election in IA-02 with about 57 percent of the vote against Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who couldn’t crack 40 percent.

Today Republican blogger Craig Robinson previews the GOP primary to take on Loebsack. His piece is a good reminder of how small the Republican tent has become in a district once represented by Jim Leach.  

Two-term State Senator Roger Stewart of Preston announced last week that he will not seek re-election in Iowa Senate district 13 next year. On Monday Ed O’Neill of Clinton confirmed that he will seek the Democratic nomination for this seat. It’s not clear yet whether there will be a contested primary. Stewart helped recruit O’Neill for this race, and he seems like a strong candidate:

O’Neill works for the Clinton Regional Development Corporation, where he focuses his energy on the creation and retention of high-wage jobs, the press release says. He previously was a small business owner, police officer, and a finance and lease manager.

“I know first-hand the difficulties small and large businesses face each day,” O’Neill said. “I’m sick and tired of seeing Wall Street corporations – not Main Street businesses – get the attention of politicians. I will work for a more even playing field that encourages economic development and creates good jobs in our local communities.”

He added: “Solving problems means listening and reaching out to everyone involved. That’s what I’ve done as an active member of my community, and that’s the positive approach I will take to the Iowa Senate.”

O’Neill also previously served as a member of the Clinton City Council and Hancock County (Illinois) Board of Supervisors. He has been active in various community activities, including serving as a board member of the Prince of Peace Academy School Board and attending Prince of Peace Catholic Church.

Iowa Senate district 13 (map) includes all of Jackson County and parts of Dubuque and Clinton counties. It’s fairly strong Democratic territory; in 2006, Chet Culver easily beat Jim Nussle in these counties, even though they were part of the Congressional district Nussle represented. Stewart won re-election to the Iowa Senate with just under 65 percent of the vote against Republican Lametta Wynn.

On the other hand, an open seat is usually an inviting target, and the unemployment rate in Jackson and Clinton counties is nearly 8 percent. I’ll be surprised if Republicans don’t make a major push in this district, even though it’s not going to be one of their top Iowa Senate pickup opportunities.

I haven’t posted enough food diaries lately, so here’s a thread for protein-rich main dishes. I love my carbs, but I’ve been trying to eat less pasta, rice and other grains.

After the jump you’ll find the recipe for tonight’s dinner, which I adapted from “Ground Meat in Cashew Nut Sauce with Chick-peas” in Julie Sahni’s fantastic book Classic Indian Cooking. I highly recommend the cookbook if you want to make Indian food at home. Although it includes chapters on meat, there are plenty of good recipes for vegetarians here. I used Sahni’s book for about 10 years before I ever tried any of her meat dishes.

Please post your own favorite high-protein meals (with or without meat) in the comments.

The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program released a report yesterday on last year’s government bailout of the insurance giant AIG. Timothy Geithner headed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time, and he failed miserably.

Few problems require federal action more urgently than global warming. I admire the members of Congress who have been trying to address this issue. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman tried to get the best deal he could. Senator John Kerry has tried to keep things moving in the upper chamber. Senator Lindsey Graham is getting tons of grief from fellow Republicans because he admits that climate change is a problem.

I want to support these people and their efforts to get a bill on the president’s desk. Unfortunately, the time has come to accept that Congress is too influenced by corporate interests to deal with climate change in any serious way. Pretending to fight global warming won’t solve the problem and may even be counter-productive.

This depressing post continues after the jump.

The Des Moines Register released more results from its latest Iowa poll by Selzer and Co., and Senator Chuck Grassley’s approval rating was 57 percent, the same as in the Register’s September poll. Only 32 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Grassley’s work.

Grassley’s 57 percent approval figure remains well short of the 75 percent he began the year with. […]

Political independents and Democrats have been responsible for much of Grassley’s slide since January. He made up little ground with them this fall. […]

More than half of Republicans say he did an excellent or good job on health care, while only about a quarter of Democrats and 39 percent of independents rate his work positively.

In a head to head matchup against Roxanne Conlin, Grassley led 57 percent to 30 percent. Last month’s Research 2000 poll of Iowans found Grassley leading Conlin by a much narrower margin, 51 percent to 39 percent. I’d like to see more polling of this race, but given Selzer’s track record in Iowa, I’m going to assume that the Register poll is close to the mark.

Since the media won’t be as focused on health care reform in the autumn of 2010, Democrats will need to build a case against Grassley that goes beyond his double-dealing on that issue. Even if Democrats run a near-perfect campaign against Grassley, he is very likely to be re-elected unless he makes some unforced errors.

On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that Grassley’s never been re-elected with less than 66 percent of the vote before. Holding him below 60 percent, or better yet below 55 percent, would greatly help down-ticket Democratic candidates next November.

Incidentally, Selzer’s poll for the Register found Senator Tom Harkin’s approve/disapprove numbers at 54/33, which is fairly strong but down from the 70 percent approval rating Harkin had in the Register’s January poll.  

Governor Chet Culver has gone through a couple of very tough months, with the film tax credit scandal breaking in September and low revenue projections prompting a 10 percent across-the-board budget cut in October. Selzer and Co. polled Iowans for the Des Moines Register last week, and Culver’s numbers are at an all-time low. He’s at 40 percent approve/49 percent disapprove (Selzer’s last poll in September pegged his approval at 50 percent). The right direction/wrong track numbers are 34/57, the worst they’ve been in ten years.

Culver loses a hypothetical matchup with former Governor Terry Branstad 57 percent to 33 percent, and he loses a hypothetical matchup with Bob Vander Plaats 45 percent to 37 percent. Against Chris Rants and Christian Fong, Culver can’t break 50 percent. He’s ahead of Rants 42-35 and ahead of Fong 42-34.

The last governor to score as low was Branstad. In February 1992, as he grappled with that year’s recession and budget crisis, only 37 percent of Iowans approved of his performance.

The economy was in much better shape by the time Branstad had to face voters in 1994. Culver’s only got a year to turn things around. There’s no guarantee unemployment will be falling by then, especially if President Obama decides to act like Herbert Hoover during the next year. Iowa’s unemployment rate, though low by nationwide standards, is the highest it’s been since the mid-1980s.

The only good thing I can say about this poll is that it may convince conservative Republicans that Vander Plaats can win the general election. During the summer, Branstad looked like a hail-mary pass for the GOP.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Research 2000 found much better numbers for Culver a month ago. Either the budget situation has caused his approval to nosedive in the past month, or one of these polls is an outlier. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t bet on a Selzer poll being an outlier in Iowa.

Rasmussen’s Iowa poll from September found numbers similar to what Selzer found last week.

SECOND UPDATE: I agree with Tom Beaumont of the Des Moines Register:

Culver has kept up an optimistic tone, predicting Iowa will emerge from the recession in better economic health than most states. Several key statistics show Iowa’s overall economy and its state government have weathered the tough times better than other states. A report issued last week by the Pew Center on the States ranked Iowa as tied for second among states in terms of fiscal health.

But that message isn’t registering with Iowans.

That Pew report gave Iowa good marks for money-management practices, and put Iowa in the group of states “least like California” in terms of budget problems, but I don’t know how Culver can get that message across. Republicans have simple talking points: budget problems = Culver incompetence.

Jason Clayworth published a big feature on Christian Fong in Wednesday’s Des Moines Register. I recommend clicking over to read the whole thing before it disappears into the Register’s pay-to-download archive. Fong’s campaign strategy has always interested me, especially his efforts to sound inclusive while remaining faithful to conservative Republican views on social issues.

I was tempted to write a post here making fun of Fong’s balancing act on gay rights. He told Clayworth that after passing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage,

Iowa lawmakers need to make sure such rights as hospital visitation and estate planning are equal for same-sex couples, he said.

“If a constitutional amendment were passed, it would be irresponsible to throw up our hands and say, ‘We’re done.’ ” Fong said. “There are going to have to be steps that are taken to make sure we treat all Iowans fairly and compassionately. Gay people, too.”

So I’m thinking about how “fair” and “compassionate” it is to let conservatives’ religious views override a minority group’s civil marriage rights, and I’m laughing at Fong’s continuing attempts to advocate for discrimination very respectfully.

And then a sidebar (available only in the print version) stopped me in my tracks:

Christian Fong says he feels a special responsibility as a racial minority candidate.

Growing up, Fong used his middle name, Shun-Bok, given to him by his Chinese father.

When he was considering medical school at the University of Iowa, he was told he should consider going by something other than Shun-Bok because the industry did not need more Asians in medicine.

He’s gone by Christian–his first name–ever since.

That kick in the gut (dressed up as a helpful hint) got me thinking about the mixed messages minorities get from nice, polite Midwesterners.

Republicans are trying to recruit a strong challenger against Congressman Leonard Boswell, and by the end of the year State Senator Brad Zaun, former Iowa GOP head Mike Mahaffey, or perhaps some other prominent figure will throw his hat in the ring. However, I continue to believe that Iowa’s third Congressional district will not be a close contest next year, and I’ll explain why after the jump.  

If you want to get an early start on holiday shopping, there’s a Green Gifts Fair this Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm in Des Moines. I’ll try to swing by, because I know a bunch of the vendors, and there will be several no-clutter gift options for those trying not to buy people “stuff” they don’t need.

If you live within striking distance of Waterloo, you can catch Tom Vilsack at Representative Bruce Braley’s fifth annual “Bruce, Blues and BBQ” party on Sunday (details below).

Anyone else planning to see Vice President Joe Biden at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner next weekend? I’d like to meet other members of the Bleeding Heartland community. You can buy tickets online at the Iowa Democratic Party’s site.

Follow me after the jump for many more event details, and post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know of something I’ve left out.

Iowa has relatively good money-management practices and is among the states “least like California” in terms of budget problems, according to a report released yesterday by the Pew Center on the States.

In the report, Pew’s researchers identified factors that have contributed significantly to California’s difficulties, then determined the degree to which other states are experiencing the same challenges. These factors are: (1) loss of state revenues; (2) the relative size of budget gaps; (3) increasing joblessness; (4) high foreclosure rates; (5) legal obstacles to balanced budgets-specifically, a supermajority requirement for tax increases or budget bills and (6) poor money-management practices.

Pew scored all 50 states using the best available data as of July 31, 2009. The snapshot captures an important juncture: the first and second quarters of 2009, the pressure point for governors and legislatures in the throes of crafting their budgets for fiscal year 2010 (which began on July 1 in all but four states).

Click here to view a map showing which states are most and least like California. On that page you’ll also find links to download the full report, its methodology, and a 50-state scorecard (pdf file).

Scanning the scorecard, I noticed that only one state has a better score overall than Iowa. The size of Iowa’s budget gap (as a percentage of total spending) ranks 15th. Only three states had a smaller change in the unemployment rate than Iowa. Only seven states had a lower foreclosure rate. We were among eight states that received a B+ grade for money-management practices (only five states received an A or A- in that category).

Republicans can complain about so-called fiscal mismanagement by Governor Chet Culver and the Democratic-controlled legislature, but compared to many other states, Iowa is weathering this challenging economy well.

Commenting on the Pew report yesterday, Mark Zandi of Moodys.com called for additional federal stimulus funding to support state budgets in fiscal year 2011: “In the past six decades, state and local governments have never seen the kind of tax-revenue collapse they are now experiencing, Mr. Zandi said.”

Health Care for America NOW and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are running television ads this week thanking 20 Democrats in relatively tough districts who voted for the House health care reform bill last Saturday. If you live in the Des Moines viewing area, you may have seen this commercial about Congressman Leonard Boswell:

Corporate-funded conservative groups have targeted Boswell in negative ads this year because of his vote for the climate-change bill in June. Ads attacking the health care reform project (many funded by insurance industry fronts or the Chamber of Commerce) have been plentiful this summer and fall too. It makes sense for reform advocates to thank Boswell, as Iowa Republicans are gearing up to challenge him with State Senator Brad Zaun or some other well-known figure.  

In other health care reform news, Tom Harkin is among the Senate Democrats trying to keep the "Stupak amendment" language on abortion out of the Senate's version of health care reform. He's absolutely right that some people pushing amendments are trying to kill the bill rather than make it better. A lot of questions have been raised about whether defeating the bill was Representative Bart Stupak's main goal. Since 1992, Stupak has been involved with the fundamentalist Christian "Family" group and has lived in their house on C Street in Washington.  

Stupak claims that as many as 40 House Democrats would reject health care reform without his amendment, but yesterday House Whip James Clyburn said the Stupak amendment only gained 10 votes for the bill. Meanwhile, more than 40 House liberals are threatening to vote down the final bill out of conference if it contains the Stupak language.  

Final note: MyDD user Bruce Webb wrote an interesting piece about what he views as "the most important and overlooked sentence" in the House health care reform bill:  

Most of the criticism of HR3962 coming from the left revolves around the belief that the House bill has no premium and so no profit controls, that it in effect delivers millions of Americans into the hands of insurance companies who can continue to raise premiums at will while denying care by managing the risk pool in favor of those unlikely to make claims. This just is not true, not if the provision in this one sentence is properly implemented. In a stroke it guts the entire current business model of the insurance companies, based as it is on predation and selective coverage, and replaces it with a model where you can only make money by extending coverage to the widest range of customers and or delivering that coverage in a more efficient way.

 Like they say, go read the whole thing.
 

Ed Tibbetts of the Quad-City Times reports that Ross Paustian will again challenge State Representative Elesha Gayman in Iowa House district 84. In 2008, Gayman defeated Paustian by about 800 votes, 52.4 percent to 47.4 percent.

It was a dispiriting loss for Republicans on several levels. Paustian led election-night returns until the massive number of absentee and early votes were added to the tally. Gayman was considered vulnerable as a first-termer in a traditionally Republican county. Conservative groups had poured tons of money into negative ads against Gayman. An organization funded by Mid-American Energy, RJ Reynolds and other corporations began running commercials against Gayman and a few other Iowa House Democrats in early 2008. The Republican Party spent heavily in the district too. Shortly before election day, the American Future Fund ran new ads against a group of House Democrats including Gayman. Still, Paustian came up short.

House district 84 didn’t turn out to be one of the closest Iowa legislative races last year, but I expect a Gayman/Paustian rematch to be highly competitive. Democratic turnout tends to be lower in non-presidential years, and Republicans may benefit from an “enthusiasm gap” in 2010. The unemployment rate in Scott County was nearly 7 percent in August 2009 and could be higher next year. The Scott County GOP has an ambitious new chairman, Brian Kennedy. He is raising more money and trying to build a bigger grassroots organization. Gayman and State Representative Phyllis Thede (House district 81) are certain to be targeted.

On the plus side, Gayman was very involved in Barack Obama’s campaign before and after the Iowa caucuses, and since July of this year she’s been consulting for the Iowa Federation of Labor’s Working Iowa Neighbors program. In other words, she has plenty of friends in a position to help her get out the vote. Also, Paustian is a farmer, and as Bleeding Heartland user American007 has noted, Iowans seem to be electing more white-collar professionals and fewer farmers to the legislature these days.

There’s always a chance that the job market will improve significantly before next fall, although jobs tend to be a lagging indicator, and Iowa tends to be slow to come out of recessions.

Bleeding Heartland readers, how would you handicap a Gayman/Paustian rematch?

Attacking Governor Chet Culver’s I-JOBS infrastructure bonding initiative continues to be a staple of Republican Party rhetoric. I’ve written about the GOP’s misleading talking points before, but State Representative Chris Rants added a new twist at last night’s fundraising dinner in Scott County. Not long ago, Rants altered his stump speech to complain about Sergeant Bluff receiving an I-JOBS grant while Culver’s recent across-the-board budget cuts will cost the community a larger amount. Speaking to a crowd of 300 in Bettendorf, Rants put a local spin on this story:

Rants began his remarks by sharing the story about Lt. Governor Patty Judge coming to Sergeant Bluff, a town that Rants represents, to give them an I-Jobs grant to refurbish the city hall. Rants then told the audience, “What Patty Judge giveth, Chet Culver taketh away.” Rants then told the crowd that Culver’s fiscal mismanagement will force the Sergeant Bluff school district to increase property taxes by over $400,000.

Rants then asked if anyone in the room knew what Governor Culver’s budget cuts were going to cost the property tax payers in the Davenport School district. Rants informed them that the cost will be $7.6 million. He also drove home the point that, while Sergeant Bluff received $250,000 I-Jobs grant to remodel their city hall, the city of Davenport has not received any I-Jobs money for its big sewer project. Rants’ ability to talk about local issues played well with the audience. Of all the candidate speeches, Rants was the one candidate who grabbed everyone’s attention.

It is clever for Rants to capitalize on local resentment about I-JOBS. Although entities in Scott County have received more than $5 million in I-JOBS grants, officials in the Quad City area have understandably been frustrated by the lack of I-JOBS support for Davenport’s sewer and flood prevention projects.

What Rants glosses over is that without I-JOBS, unmet needs for infrastructure improvements would be even greater. The I-JOBS program includes $118.5 million for flood prevention and reconstructing buildings in communities affected by last year’s flooding. But requests for that portion of the I-JOBS money totaled $333.6 million.

I-JOBS allocated $80 million for water quality improvements, including sewer construction and repair. Substandard and outdated sewer systems are a huge environmental problem in Iowa, as the Des Moines Register’s Perry Beeman and Chase Davis chronicled last week here and here. Iowa has more than 500 unsewered communities. At least I-JOBS and the federal stimulus package will help make a dent in this problem.

Rants wants to have it both ways, criticizing Culver for borrowing while claiming the governor’s program hasn’t done enough for Scott County. If Republicans in Congress and the state legislature had had their way, Iowa cities and towns would not be getting any help this year for improving their sewage systems.

I have yet to hear Rants or any Republican candidate explain how they would have paid for flood recovery projects without state borrowing. For instance, I-JOBS included $100 million targeted for the University of Iowa, which unlocked $500 million in federal funding to help rebuild flood-damaged buildings on campus. How would Republicans have addressed this problem? Would they have turned down the federal funding, and if not, where would they have found $100 million to match the federal dollars?

Linn County received $45 million from I-JOBS for flood recovery. That’s in addition to money raised from the local-option sales tax (which most Republicans opposed). How would Republican candidates have paid for flood recovery in the Cedar Rapids area without I-JOBS?

Terry Branstad’s criticism of I-JOBS reaches a special level of hypocrisy. He asserted on Saturday night, “Too much debt is bad and those that create it should be thrown out of office.” But while he was governor, Branstad used state bonding several times, and his total borrowing in inflation-adjusted dollars was larger than the I-JOBS program. After the jump I’ve posted a press release from the Iowa Democratic Party, which contains more details about Branstad’s use of state bonding.

It’s also worth noting that interest rates are currently near historic lows. That, coupled with Iowa’s rock-solid bond rating, reduced the cost of the I-JOBS borrowing. I would wager that the state had to pay higher interest rates on bonds issued while Branstad was governor.